An Unlikely Master: Story 4
by The Dark Lady Chaos
Summary: It was annoying at first, but Tom is finding that being Master of Death an be rather fun.


Disclaimer: I sadly do not own Harry Potter.

"Pst. Tom, Tom!"

Harry rolled over silently and stared at the queen bed across from his. The hotel rooms below and above remained sleepy and silent.

"Wake up!"

Harry grinned when he heard muffled curse words, and threw his pillow at the taller man without regret.

"Oi, Tom! Wake up!"

Irritation clear in his every move, Tom turned his head in what looked to be an attempt at a one hundred-eighty degree rotation, refusing to turn the rest of his body.

"P—Harry, do you know what time it is?"

"No I don't as a matter of fact, do you?"

"No! But that's beside the point, the point is, is that it's—"

Harry drew back the curtains beside his bed, sunlight beaming off the metal lampshade and onto Tom's bedspread, the bright spot on the bed causing Tom to shield his eyes.

"It's sunrise!" Harry laughed excitedly.

"Yes. Precisely my point."

"Tom we can't just be laying about when the sky is waking up."

"I was asleep until a few seconds ago."

Harry stood up dramatically, hair rumpled and clothing wrinkled from sleep; he jumped happily over the side of his bed, danced mischeviously over to Tom and prodded the other man's head where he had lain it back down on his pillow.

"C'mon Tom, live a little."

"I can't believe you just said that to me."

Another prod.

"Brat!"

Tom stood quickly, glared darkly at the smaller man, and swiftly gathered up his blanket around himself to pull over his cold shoulders.

"Great you're up, lets go!"

"Ok, stop, first off no, if we go to do anything I want coffee. Second, I'm not going out into that frigid weather shirtless Pot—Harry, I'm already cold if you haven't noticed."

Harry allowed himself a pout before waving the death stick and giving the both of them temporary conjured clothes, his eyes gleamed brightly in the dull light of the room.

"Coffee then."

Tom nodded shortly and took Harry's offered arm, quietly, both men vanished from between the crack behind the sunlit curtains.

***  
Tom eyed Harry's coffee cup  
with unhidden disdain as the smaller man continued to add spoonful after spoonful of sugar, the white crystals eventually paused in their dissolving due to the accumulation of the sweetener.

"The amount of sugar in that cup of tea is absurd, you're going to make yourself sick."

Harry stirred his tea happily, not waiting for the crystals to completely dissolve, and drank, knocking back nearly half the cup despite its scalding temperature.

"Well I think drinking coffee is ridiculous, much less black," Harry waved his hand absently toward Tom's coffee cup from which the taller man was carefully rationing to last as they walked up the hill beyond little Hangleton.

"If you insist on waking me at an ungodly hour for a hike and a sun rise, then I'm going to drink coffee and it's going to be black."

"Ah don't be a sourpuss."

Harry turned to look at Tom with a grin, lifting his cup of tea up in a jarring toast and sloshing half of the remaining liquid over the lip.

Tom rolled his eyes, hiding the movement behind his hair, "You look drunken half the time."

"Who says I'm not?"

"Brat."

"Ha. You only say that when you've got no come back."

"I say it when you're being ridiculous."

"Touché."

***  
Tom swirled his coffee around with a resigned expression as Harry dragged him up the hill once more, practically carrying him.

"Why must we do this every day? It's incredibly dull to stare at a ball of fire every morning."

"It's tradition!"

Tom gave Harry an amused look.

"It's tradition since you began dragging me here every morning. Twenty years of walking up this stupid hill Harry."

Harry stopped suddenly and looked at Tom. "Do you really want to stop?"

Tom found that the answer to that was rather easy despite his annoyance.

"Mm. No, no I don't mind."

Harry easily stepped right back into the trek with a smile and tugged on Tom's hand.  
"I'll take that as the seal of approval that it is."

Tom smiled.

Harry sighed and banged his head into the 'wall' located inside the shadowy realm of death. The dark fog that constantly filled the area left wispy trails in the wake of anyone happening to walk by, sinewy strands often extended even farther behind and wrapped around any blackness unlucky enough to be stumbled upon, and trapped it in a rope like cage.

"Bored again?" Tom didn't look up from his book, but rather turned to a new page, "Me too."

"Ugh."

"Why don't you try to sleep? You keep the both of us awake."

"I think I'm having an existential crisis!"

Tom did look up at this, and squinted at the smaller man. "You realize that you won't pass on until at least a few billion years from now, yes? You have all the time in the world to do something," he went back to his book.

"Yes but what have I been doing with my life Tom?" He flopped over onto Tom's lap rather pathetically and the taller man lifted the book over his head so that the smaller wouldn't crush it.

"It's been what, a century since I plucked you up from the void and the most exciting thing that's happened was killing Ginny Weasley!"

Tom sighed and closed the book, letting the realm suck the book back up to wherever it had come from, and ran a hand through Harry's hair.

"Well what do you want to do Harry?"

"If i don't do something memorable, I at least want to do something fun."

"Fun? I'm already terrified."

"Tom I'm being serious! We should go do something. Something worthwhile. Something that'll last, at least for as long as the mortals are around. Something that'll leave an imprint in memory."

Harry grinned suddenly.

"Whatever it is, it's a bad idea." Tom was already trying to think of what possible horrors could be coming.

"What! You haven't heard it yet!"

"Terrified."

"You could order me not to tell you."

"Brat, I'm not going to order you to do any such thing. Once you don't have to tell me something, you'll go and do it on your own. Which is disastrous. You'll hurt yourself by poking a dragon or something. Or perhaps by talking to an acromantula about a thousand year old basilisk."

"I shouldn't tell you these thing's you're such a meanie... How sweet. Your loss on that option then, no be in awe of my brilliance, the idea is a fantastic one believe me. Let's have a redo!"

"A redo?"

Harry beamed up at Tom from his spot on the floor and on Tom's lap.

"Yeah, do-over, redo, whatever. Which time do you think would be best, my original one or yours?"

"I'd say yours. We can always do mine later."

"Yes! We ge to mess with Dumbledore!"

Tom quirked a brow. "I was under the impression that you liked the man."

"Well, I did, do, he had good intentions, but he was manipulative. But you don't like him. I figured you would be excited at the prospect of being able to mess with him."

Tom blinked in surprise. "Oh, yes, definitely. I just didn't think you would take my likes into account."

Harry smiled and reached up with difficulty to ruffle the taller man's hair.

"You should know me better by now Tom."

They both stood, Harry with an arm slung around Tom's shoulders, ignoring the fact that this meant he had to stand high on his toes.

"My original time then. Ready Tom?"

Harry slipped his arm off Tom's shoulder and offered a cheerful hand instead. The black mist between them parted eagerly like a puppy ready to please and Tom grasped Harry's hand, the gesture dispersing more smoke like fog.

"I'm always ready brat, just warn me so we don't have any more piles of sick to clean up."

"That was one time!"

The fog began to swirl up around the pair, a windless vortex, web like strands issuing off in fine individual particles to form main streams; the mist wrapped around each man respectively in what could be perceived as a hug, before the forms of the men began to become less opaque, and translucency soon became the best word describe them, until their figures faded away completely, only the whisper of breaths evident to show their previous presence.

AN: Hiya! This is my fourth one shot in this series of one shots. These short stories are also the first fan fictions I've posted, so critique is appreciated, though comments of encouragement are always poked at with a smile. Thank you for reading!


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